Strata
016
Search for Phoenician Shipwrecks
Titanic Explorer and Archaeologist Team Up
Two Phoenician shipwrecks were discovered this summer in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, about 30 miles from the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon. The finds were made by American underwater explorer Robert Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, and Harvard University archaeologist Lawrence Stager, director of the excavations at Ashkelon.
The two ships are the world’s oldest known deep-sea wrecks. The longer craft, measuring about 60 feet, is the largest pre-classical vessel ever found. The ships, which were found sitting upright in about 1,500 feet of water, are believed to have capsized in a storm in about 750 B.C., after setting sail from the Phoenician port of Tyre. Their cargo of wine, housed in hundreds of large ceramic jugs called amphorae, was likely bound for Egypt or the Phoenician colony of Carthage. Amazingly, the amphorae were found intact and in pristine condition.
The discovery of the jars was “one of our greatest moments,” Stager told a Tel Aviv press conference. Owing to the bitterly cold temperatures, lack of sunlight and intense pressure at such depths, the jars were well preserved, though the vessels’ wood encasement had disintegrated (the shape and length of the ships are deduced from the position of the amphorae).
Ballard’s mission was set in motion by serendipity. Two years ago investigators set out to locate a lost Israeli submarine in the eastern Mediterranean. With the help of a nuclear research submarine from the U.S. Navy, they discovered the barest hints of a shipwreck. Soon Ballard was on the case. His team explored the site with an underwater remote-controlled robot called Jason, a global positioning satellite and a deep-water side-scan sonar system that surveys the seafloor for large objects.
The artifacts that the team recovered—12 amphorae, crockery for food preparation, an incense stand for offerings to the weather gods and a wine decanter—have allowed Stager to estimate not only the ships’ point of origin, age and likely destination, but also the size of the crews (a half dozen sailors each) and their likely diet (fish stew).
Stager said his findings were preliminary; more would be revealed in the coming months, as the artifacts are brought to Harvard for study.
The Phoenicians, who populated present-day Lebanon from about 1200 B.C. to about 146 B.C., were seagoing traders. Because the route the vessels followed was not previously known as one traveled by the Phoenicians, the recent finds are a boon to archaeologists and scholars, who have relied heavily on classical texts and the Bible for knowledge of Phoenician shipping. “A lot of history books will be rewritten from what we are finding in the deep seas,” Ballard told reporters in Tel Aviv.
Ballard said that he hopes to find more ancient wrecks along the same path. “The deep sea probably has more history in it than all the museums of the world combined. Human history lost in the high seas is waiting to be discovered.”
Ballard is scheduled to report on the discovery on Saturday, November 20, 1999, at a session sponsored by the Biblical Archaeology Society during the Annual Meeting, at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.
Got a Dead Sea Scroll Question?
Head for the Heartland
Think Qumran, and Kansas is unlikely to come to mind. But Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City is poised to become the world’s largest repository of scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
A $500,000 gift from Edna Shepherd, a local philanthropist, will enable the seminary to house the Kansas Qumran Bibliographic Project: a computerized bibliography of some 20,000 materials on or about the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The list is the life’s work of Fred E. Young, professor emeritus of Old Testament at the seminary. Young’s quest for a comprehensive bibliography of resources pertaining to the scrolls began 40 years ago, not long after the scrolls were first discovered. Armed with little more than 3” × 5” index cards, Young traveled to scores of countries in search of titles and materials. In time, he oversaw the creation of a computer catalogue of scroll-related materials. Scholars from around the world continue to contribute to Young’s list.
“The gift of Mrs. Shepherd is the realization of a dream and the answer to our prayers for the Kansas Qumran Bibliographic Project,” said Young. Now those in search of clues to Qumran’s secrets need look no further than Kansas.
017
Robbers Bitten by Millennium Bug
Year 2000 Spurs Antiquities Thefts
Y2K is creating problems for more than just the computer industry. It is causing a sharp increase in the illegal trade of artifacts in Israel. Arrests for antiquities thefts have more than quadrupled since 1996, when only 4 illegal antiquities traders were arrested; last year 18 were arrested, and 4 more were nabbed in the first half of this year, according to Amir Ganor, chief of the theft prevention division of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
“We are now seeing a trend of antiquity dealers wanting to stock up on as many objects as possible because they feel that in the year 2000 there will be a bigger demand by pilgrims for these objects,” Ganor told BAR.
The hottest items among dealers preparing for next year’s pilgrims are oil lamps and coins from the first century A.D. and Byzantine bronze crosses.
“What more important souvenir can a pilgrim coming here for the year 2000 take back with him than an oil lamp from the time of Jesus? For $15 or $25 he can have a good souvenir,” said Ganor. “If they buy it from a licensed dealer, it is legal. It’s not their problem that it most probably is stolen—that’s my problem.”
In early March Ganor’s division caught a team of thieves as they were about to break into an archaeological cave in the village of Silwan, just south of the Old City of Jerusalem. In May the division arrested an unlicensed dealer and a customer as they were about to complete a transaction in the Old City for $13,000 worth of antiquities. Late last year they arrested another man as he was trying to sell more than 700 artifacts to an antiquities dealer in Jaffa. Among the loot was a rare coin from the second year of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, 132–135 B.C.). In the past, similar coins have sold for up to $250,000.
Anticipating an increase in such robberies for the year 2000, the Israel Antiquities Authority has been working to improve its surveillance methods by increasing foot patrols, using infrared and night-vision binoculars and installing alarms at sites, Ganor said.
In Israel it is legal to sell and purchase antiquities from licensed dealers. However, noted Ganor, the law also states that antiquities are a national treasure and belong to the state.
“I don’t know if the law is good or bad,” said Ganor. “In Syria, Egypt and Jordan it is illegal to deal in antiquities, but when you see how many of their artifacts reach us here, you see that the prohibition doesn’t stop the thefts. At least here I can find many important archaeological objects [being sold] and have the chance to buy them back. There are many instances of ancient scrolls being rescued that way. If it [the sale of antiquities] was illegal, those scrolls would have gone abroad, and we wouldn’t have found them.”
A sophisticated industry has grown up around the finding and selling of objects. The highly organized pyramid starts with thieves who work in teams in the field, raiding unguarded archaeological sites; at the next level are coordinators who collect finds from several teams; at the top is the trader, who sells the objects to antiquity dealers.
In their scramble to grab as many objects as possible, looters often destroy centuries of history. “The damage they do is irreversible,” said Ganor. “They destroy the site in scientific terms. They erase whole pages from history.”
There are 70 licensed antiquities dealers in Israel, mainly in Jerusalem and Jaffa, but according to Ganor, almost 95 percent of their merchandise is stolen—and both the merchants and the government know it. “But we have to prove it,” said Ganor.
“The main area of operation for the thieves is on the border between Israel and the Palestinian Territory,” Ganor said. As with car thefts, there is Jewish-Arab cooperation in antiquities thefts, he said.
The problem has become more pronounced now that portions of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been transferred to the Palestinian National Authority, making it easier for thieves to escape from Israeli agents, according to Ganor. Fighting antiquities theft in those areas is now the responsibility of the fledgling Palestinian Antiquities Authority, which has promised to create an antitheft division. There is no cooperation between the two antiquities authorities, Ganor noted.
Palestinian Antiquities Authority director Dr. Hamdan Taha agrees that antiquities theft has increased in Palestinian-controlled areas, but he blames the political situation. Before the recent change of governments in Israel, there was a freeze in the transfer of territory to Palestinian control, creating a vacuum of authority in those areas and allowing thieves to feel free to plunder, said Taha.
018
Stone Dinnerware Factory Found
Martha Stewart May Not Approve, But the Priests Did
Road construction stopped suddenly in East Jerusalem this summer when a tractor accidentally broke through the roof of a 2,000-year-old quarry and factory used to produce stone vessels during the Second Temple period (first century B.C. to 70 A.D.).
Archaeologists say the man-made underground cave, which extends for about a quarter acre, is the largest vessel factory ever discovered. The only other such factory was discovered about a mile to the east 15 years ago. (See Yitzhak Magen, “Ancient Israel’s Stone Age,” BAR 24:05.)
“This cave is several times larger than the other cave, and we can see the size and importance of the stone vessel production,” said Jerusalem district archaeologist Jon Seligman. “We still haven’t uncovered the entire cave.”
According to Jewish law, stone vessels, unlike pottery, are not susceptible to becoming ritually impure. In about the first century B.C., Jerusalem stone workers began to carve vessels from the soft limestone found locally—perhaps an indication that ritual purity laws were observed more strictly in this period. These vessels were of special importance to the Temple priests, for whom ritual purity was vital.
The combined quarry and factory, which is made up of a string of connected rooms, may have been in use for a couple of centuries, employing some tens of craftsmen, said Seligman. Over the years, workers penetrated deeper into the cave as they required more stone for their work. Most of the cave rooms are now blocked by debris, including broken cups and plates that never made it to market and stone cores removed from the center of the cups. Seligman believes these discarded fragments were tossed by workers into the previous work area as they moved deeper into the cave.
Work in the factory probably ended with the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70 A.D., said Seligman.
“When there is no longer a demand for stone vessels, people stop making them. [With the destruction of the Temple] there was no economic incentive to keep making them, so the factory closed and one day the people just didn’t come back to work anymore,” said Seligman.
Down the Hatch!
Exhibit Explores Drinking in the Ancient World
The Talmud compares a man who drinks one cup of wine to a lamb. With the second cup he becomes a lion; with the third, an ape; with the fourth, a pig.
That didn’t seem to faze King Herod. A man known for his extravagant tastes, Herod imported vast quantities of Italian wine (no homegrown varieties for this king) to his desert outpost at Masada. Museum-goers can learn this and other little-known facts about ancient carousing at an ongoing Israel Museum exhibit, Drink and Be Merry: Wine and Beer in Ancient Times.
Drink and Be Merry explores the production, trade, marketing and, of course, drinking of wine in Israel and the Mediterranean region from the fourth millennium B.C. until the sixth century A.D., when the rise of Islam led to prohibitions on alcohol use. Among the highlights is a reconstructed Greek-style banquet room with piped-in flute music of the kind that would have been played by a female entertainer at ancient banquets.
Also on exhibit are the large wine jars unearthed at Masada, which have their contents listed in Latin inscriptions, written in ink on the side of each jar. A spectacular silver and bronze drinking set belonged to Philip II of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great. Curator Michel Dayagi-Mendels suggested that the young Alexander may have taken a sip of wine with his father from these very vessels.
A clay plate depicting a vomiting Greek reveler suggests that drunkenness is not a new problem. “There are a lot of ancient sources warning against overdrinking,” said Dayagi-Mendels. “Not everybody listened, and it was considered a bad thing to get drunk.”
The Jerusalem exhibition will run until January 1, 2000.
017
What Is It?
A. Wig rack
B. Pointy hat
C. Royal ring-toss stake
D. Drinking vessel (shown upside down)
018
What It Is, Is …
B. Pointy hat
Gold cones are among the most striking—and puzzling—religious artifacts of Bronze Age Europe, and scholars have long speculated about their function. Though the place, date and circumstances of the discovery of this artifact remain shrouded in mystery, the 29-inch-tall hollow cone is now thought to be a headdress worn during religious rituals. Fragments of leather or felt found inside the cone appear to rule out what was until now the most popular identification of this type of cone: a ritual vessel. But the fragments support the designation as a hat: A soft lining would have transformed the uncomfortable cone into a wearable headdress. And with a 7-inch diameter at its base, the cone bears the hat size of an average adult male. (The gold headdress is part of the exhibition Gods and Heroes of the Bronze Age, at the Grand Palais in Paris from September 28, 1999, to January 9, 2000, and then moving to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens from February 7 to May 7, 2000.)
Search for Phoenician Shipwrecks
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